Drag queen Harmonica Sunbeam is an affable storyteller at a time where Drag Story Hour is a source of controversy and protests. – DeWitt Davis The first screening will be followed by a Q&A with filmmakers and special guests. All in-person screening venues provide sound amplification headphones upon request with venue management. IFC Center can […]
NYC PREMIERE New Jersey’s own Jesselyn Silva, a three-time national boxing champion, is on her way to superstardom, dominating the junior ranks at the age of 15. With her every step of the way is her father, Pedro, a single parent who helps her navigate coaches, training schedules, and the angst of teenage life. When […]
Mija takes us into the world of Chicano pop music through the eyes of a young Mexican -American talent manager Doris Muñoz as she handles the superstar Cuco and the emerging singer Jacks Haupt. Growing up in California with undocumented family members, she scarcely saw images of accomplished Latinas in American media. She asks: how […]
WORLD PREMIERE Blake Zeff is an investigative journalist who gets to the root of the student debt crisis. Following the stories of those most affected, Zeff ultimately zeroes in on the unexpected heart of the problem and exposes the rotten core of the country’s policymaking. Confronting powerful enablers and challenging lies, Loan Wolves is a […]
NYC PREMIERE A rundown halfway house in Ukraine houses the country’s most vulnerable—children cramped between precarious homes and the foster care system. Simon Lereng Wilmont documents fast-disappearing childhoods amidst ever-worsening political strife with great intimacy and access. As the film records how children suffer and survive violence and abandonment, the “orphanage” becomes a metaphor for […]
WORLD PREMIERE Far from the unfavorable images often espoused in pop culture, today’s teens are some of the most engaged, thoughtful, creative, courageous, and self-aware of any era. Filmmaker and middle-school educator Alexis Neophytides gifts us this survey of thirteen-year-olds from across the globe as they navigate the joys and complexities of that seminal age. […]
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE Three children from the impoverished Venezuelan district of Las Brisas channel their pain and joy into music as part of a unique, government-sponsored orchestral music program, El Sistema. For ten years, as her native Venezuela gradually collapsed in the background, director Marianela Maldonado followed the students, developing an intimacy that gives their […]
WORLD PREMIERE After the death of her mother 18-year-old Sahar is left in charge of her poor, mentally disabled father in an isolated village in Iran. Sahar dreams of attending university and becoming a doctor, but extended family insist she play the role of caretaker unless her father remarries. This warm and intimate observational portrait […]
US PREMIERE As a suicidal 16-year-old Marusya Syroechkovskaya falls in love with a humorous grunge kid named Kimi. Fueled by drugs and music, the inseparable couple films the euphoria, anxiety and misery of their precarious existence under the shadow of their oppressive government. Captured over 12 years, this raw, exuberant, and moving love story, provides […]
NYC PREMIERE The challenges of getting accepted to top colleges for today’s American high schoolers are captured by two Sacramento teachers in a new original musical theater production that speaks to the present moment like nothing else. As schools from Silicon Valley to West Virginia to The Bronx’s Fordham High School for the Arts mount […]